‘Cloudy 2' Showers Comic-Con with Funny Food

Sony Animation delivered a mouth-watering sneak peek at its movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 during its Comic-con panel on Friday afternoon. Directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn were joined on stage by the film’s voice actors Bill Hader (Flint), Anna Faris (Sam Sparks) and Terry Crews (Earl).

A fun video featuring the voice cast (Ferris, Hader, Andy Samberg, Kristen Schaal) trying to get into character by putting on Cloudy costumes started the panel on the right note. Cameron and Pearn, who worked as storyboard artists on the first movie, talked about how they welcomed the chance to revisit Flint on this project, which took them about two and a half years to complete.

They also shared some of the cool shots of the fruit/animal hybrid characters and discussed how the team initially took real food and turned it into animals and then gave that to the animators to create tests with edibles like strawberries and pickles. One of the rules on the first feature was that the food had to look delicious. For the sequel, the food had to look fresh, delicious…and scary.

Hader noted that “I was being told things like ‘Over here is the Tacodile’ and ‘You’re with a Pancakebear.”

Faris added, “There’s an assumption that animated movies are easier for actors, but they require a different skill set, and your voice is kind of shot after four hours or so.” Crews added that his family really loved the first movie and when he found out that he was offered the role of Earl after Mr. T wasn’t coming back to reprise his character, he was determined not to mess it up. “You’ve got your Michael Keaton Batman, you’ve got your Christian Bale Batman. I’m going to be the Terry Crews Earl.”

The movie, which will be released on September 27, finds Flint Lockwood now working at The Live Corp Company for his idol Chester V. However, he is forced out of his job when he learns that his infamous machine is still working and creating oddly menacing food-animal hybrids.